Chapter 26
Periwinkle
The clustered news vans have dwindled in number as some have followed the refugees to their new homes, but there are still several scattered along the edges of the camp. I watch a reporter interview a couple of men in hunter gear, the back of my neck prickling.
“Why do they want to talk to those jerks? Shouldn’t they be focusing on the rift?”
Jonah lets out a short sigh from where he’s standing next to me, peering around an abandoned tent.
“That’s the news cycle for you. As far as they’ve noticed, nothing about the rift has changed in the past couple of days.
Telling everyone ‘Things are still the same here’ doesn’t make for great news. I mean, it’s not new.”
A shudder runs down my spine. “Things will change a lot if the army starts dropping bombs. Are they even going to warn the other people still here?”
Jonah’s mouth tightens. “They probably won’t give any details, just evacuate the area.”
“Of everyone except us,” Hail mutters behind us. “They’re hoping we all get caught in the blasts.”
I’d like to tell him he’s being overly cynical, but from what I’ve seen of Hueber and most of his soldiers, I’d guess he’s probably right.
I draw my chin up. “We’ll just have to let the other humans know now. Once the whole country finds out what the army is planning and how bad it’ll be, they’ll have to stop their plans.”
Despite Jonah’s comment about the news cycle, I assume it won’t be too tricky getting back on camera. The reporters have seemed happy to film us lots of times before.
I wait until the interview with the hunters is finished and the jerks have walked far enough away that they won’t see us, and then I march up to one of the other news vans nearby. No point in talking to people who like chatting with our enemies.
Jonah walks beside me, and my other mates follow through the shadows, along with most of the other beings who spied on the soldiers with us. Gnash stomped off to tell Rollick when I announced my intentions, and I have a feeling the demon is going to go straight to the nuclear option.
Destroy them before they can destroy us—and, well, most of their own world too. I can see the argument for it, but I can’t shake the suspicion that going on the offensive against the humans is only going to make them more eager to bomb us.
If even one aspect of the memory wipe goes slightly wrong, then we’re still screwed, just more so.
So why not end the conflict before anyone’s bombing anyone? I won us a whole lot of support before.
Unfortunately, it turns out that Jonah’s comments about fresh material apply to me too.
The first reporter I walk up to gives me a onceover and shakes her head before I’ve gotten one word out. “We’ve already done an interview with you. Got plenty of footage. We’re moving on to other stories—sorry.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an apology that sounded less apologetic.
“We’ve got huge news!” I say with a broad gesture of my hands. “An even bigger catastrophe is coming. You need to—”
The reporter cuts me off with an upheld hand. “Colonel Hueber spread the word that some of… your kind of beings might try to create a panic. Is there anything you can actually give me that we can show our audience?”
What, do they want me to cart the bombs over as proof?
I grope for the right words to convince her. “It isn’t happening yet. But we heard them talking—”
“Nope, sorry, that doesn’t cut it. My producer says we need to stick to what’s vivid and concrete.”
She turns away.
When we head over to the next news van, I decide to get straight to the point. I stride up to the reporter who’s drinking from one of those ever-present cups of coffee. “The army is going to bomb the city!”
Maybe I’m a little too emphatic about it. The guy sputters and coughs, apparently on the verge of choking on his caffeinated beverage.
My eyes widen. “Um, sorry, are you okay?”
He waves off my concern and swipes his hand across his mouth, appearing to recover. “What was that about bombs?”
I point toward the military area of the camp. “Colonel Hueber is trying to get permission to drop bombs on the city. That’ll only—”
Like the first reporter, this one doesn’t let me finish my story, even though I’ve already given him a juicy part of it. “I can’t broadcast anything about impending military action unless they release the information to the public. Our instructions on that are very clear.”
“But—”
“I’m not getting arrested! I’d look awful in orange.”
He scrambles away into the van as if he’s afraid I’m going to voodoo him into doing my bidding.
My shoulders slump. Jonah clasps my arm reassuringly. “We only need to find one person.”
Raze shifts out of the shadows, a frown darkening his face. “But if the soldiers have threatened all the reporters… Humans are very scared of other humans with guns.”
Having seen what those guns can do even to shadowkind, I guess that’s reasonable. We can’t stand around and twiddle our thumbs, though.
Any minute now, Rollick is going to come rushing in with his own plans that might cut humans right out of the equation.
Mirage pops into being at my other side and cocks his head. “Do we need reporters? It’s the cameras and satellites that send the message to the TVs, isn’t it?”
My hopes lift and plummet in the space of a heartbeat. “But we don’t know how to use them.”
Jonah clears his throat, looking suddenly awkward. “Er, I might. I helped out a lot with the A/V equipment when I was in high school, and I was in the broadcast club for a couple of years. I actually… always wondered about getting word out about the shadowkind somehow or other.”
His gaze slides to the flood of murkiness at the other end of the camp. “I didn’t think it’d happen because the shadow realm was about to collapse all over our world, but that part’s already done. Desperate times… I guess we’d have to break into one of the vans to get the equipment, though.”
His uncertainty flows into me like a gulp of over-sour lemonade. Jonah isn’t really the criminal type.
He’s only offering for me.
Guilt clamps around my gut. “You don’t have to. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
A rough chuckle tumbles out of Jonah. “It seems like there’s going to be a lot more trouble for all of us if we don’t do everything we can. Come on. The first thing we need is a van no one’s monitoring so we have plenty of time to do our work.”
He tips his head to Mirage. “Can you have a look around for a news crew where the employees aren’t wearing protective badges? Your illusions work better than any other distraction.”
Mirage grins. “Easy as pie.” He flips through the air and into the shadows with a whoosh of his tails.
The rest of us shadowkind duck into the darkness as well so we don’t draw unwanted attention from the humans around us. It only takes a few minutes before Mirage comes dashing back to us, pulling himself into solid form just long enough to give Jonah directions.
The fox shifter must have paid attention to all the reasons the reporters might have to balk. He can’t pull off anything concrete, but vivid and startling is his wheelhouse.
Within view of the cameraman who’s lounging outside the van, he conjures the impression of a few glowing figures darting past the nearby tents. Their bodies pulse with light as if they’re radioactive.
The man jerks to attention. He snatches up his camera and calls to the reporter he’s working with—in a hushed version of a shout, because he doesn’t want anyone else getting in on the story if they can break it first.
The reporter scrambles out the back of the van, dabbing lipstick on her mouth as she comes. She shoves the tube into her pocket and hustles with the cameraman in the direction the glowing figures appeared to be running.
Mirage flits away through the shadows to lead them on his wild goose chase. Or I guess a wild fox chase?
The second the news team is out of view, I leap through the tiny, dark gap around the van’s doors.
They locked automatically when the reporter shut them, but there’s an easy switch to flip over. I nudge them just wide enough for Jonah to scramble inside. Hail, Fen, and a few of the other shadowkind dart in after him.
“I’ll keep watch,” Raze tells us, flexing his sinewy shoulders.
Jonah nods and peers at the equipment on the built-in shelves. “I’ll make this as quick as possible.”
He sits on the rolling stool in front of the displays mounted across from the shelves. Sucking his lower lip under his teeth in a way that looks adorable, he taps a button here and another there, and then speeds his fingers across the keyboard.
“I’ve got contact with the news station. Telling them we have an urgent story, breaking news, that they’ll want to show live so we can get it out right away. We need to be ready. Grab that other camera there.”
Shanty ripples into view and snatches the device in question off one of the shelves. Jonah jumps up to plug it into the control board, I guess so it’ll transmit its recording to the waiting studio.
I’m going to need to talk. I’m going to need to talk now and fast. Because who knows how long the station will keep broadcasting once they see what we’re sending them.
I drag in a breath, and Jonah lifts his hand. “We’re on in one minute. I’ll count you down. Peri, are you going to talk alone?”
Before I need to answer, Hail steps in. His stance is stiff, but he holds his head high. “No. I think we should give them plenty to look at so we keep their attention.”
With a glimmer over his body, he shifts into his fae form. The icy pallor and blue-tinged veins flow over his skin while his antlers sprout from amid his thickening hair.
Jonah blinks at him, never having seen this version of the winter fae before.
Fen jumps in too, scales sprouting over her arms and face, her hair rippling longer down her back like a waterfall. “I’ll be in it too. You’ve got this, Peri.”
I face the camera Shanty is holding, bolstered by the support I’m being offered on both sides.
Jonah starts counting. “Ten, nine, eight…”
He gives me the last three seconds with his fingers, in silence. Then a light flares on high on the control panel.
I launch myself into my appeal. “Hello, humans! I have urgent news for all of you. We’ve learned that the soldiers here at Jackson City are planning to drop bombs on it.
They want to blow the whole place up! All those people’s homes, all the living beings still stuck there.
But even worse—aggression seems to rile up the shadows that’ve drowned the city.
If the buildings are bombarded, the murky stuff could be tossed all over the place, all over the country, every other city and town!
Please don’t let that happen. I promise there are better ways to—”
Jonah lets out a grunt. “They cut us off.”
Shanty lowers the camera. “You got most of the message out. Good job.”
The administrator’s praise barely touches the tension inside me. “What now?”
Jonah smiles crookedly. “We get the hell away from this van before they call the police. And then we wait and see what people made of your news.”